If Parent Is A Verb Then Who Are You: Adoption And Identity

A birth certificate can name parents, but it can’t explain belonging. We sit down with two people who are “adopted” in very different ways and pull on the thread everyone avoids: what do you do with the hole that biology, paperwork, and silence can leave behind? One of us grew up in a closed adoption with a nagging question that never quit: why would a birth mother keep two sons yet give up a newborn? The other grew up inside a home where addiction, neglect, and performative “fatherhood” made the word parent feel like a label instead of a promise.

We talk transracial adoption and identity, including what it’s like to be a Black kid raised by white parents in Utah, how racism shows up early, and why even great adoptive parents can’t always feel what their child feels. We also get honest about the coping strategies that follow: chasing fame, stacking trophies, living with constant self-judgment, and turning mentorship into a way to rebuild what you didn’t get. Along the way we explore the idea that two things can be true at once: gratitude can coexist with grief, and love can coexist with unanswered questions.

Find Stair Pits here:
www.unbreakableorigins.com

[00:00:00] Two Blindnesses And What Parents Mean
[00:04:19] Divorce, Alcohol, And A Life Saved
[00:09:13] Closed Adoption And The Need For Answers
[00:12:55] Transracial Upbringing And Belonging
[00:20:15] When Parenting Is Title Only
[00:31:50] Mentorship, Motives, And Inner Healing
[00:33:26] Chasing Fame To Prove Worth
[00:40:42] Learning The World Through Odd Skills
[00:47:24] The Moment Anger Could Have Killed
[00:57:29] Cain And Abel Then Forgiveness

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

We are all born with two blindnesses. The first blindness is sin, and the second is ignorance.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

I will never find my biological parents and call them anything else outside of their government names. They will never be called mom and dad in my eyes because mom and dad are the people who raised me, not the people who created me.

SPEAKER_04 0:20

Parent in your family was a verb. Parent in my family was a noun.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 0:26

Yes. It was just simply a type.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 0:32

Imagine, if you will, a life where your cigarette is more important than your child, where liquor is more loved than anyone else in your life. Welcome to the stereo itself.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Don't cut this one. Right? As we're sitting here, get ready. Absolutely. Out professionals get ready. We can do a tutorial. Right. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Stare Pits. I am your esteemed guest back again with R.A. Thompson. Thank you for having me back on as a guest on this amazing podcast. How are you doing today, sir? I'm doing well.

SPEAKER_04 1:27

And I hate to admit, I don't know whether I should be flattered or embarrassed that you're sucking up to me that much by wearing your golden knights gear. Because in a feeble attempt to give Max a greater understanding of his family's culture, I introduced him to hockey. And um he, you know, now wears golden knights gear, which I'm grateful for, but it also feels like you're famelessly sucking up to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Hey, hook, line, and sinker, my man. I'm golden knights all day long. And for those of you who are watching on video on YouTube, really appreciate it. This might be Robert's best tie that he's worn so far. Really, I mean, just the classic silver, a very simple pattern. This is you, if in tie form, if you will.

SPEAKER_04 2:14

I used to have a uh personal shopper that would go and would bring me things because I didn't want to go to the store. They would just bring things that I would just find. And I gave them X amount of money, then they would buy clothes for me. And when I got this, I really, really liked it. Originally, I think it was off-white, but then I washed it and it became silver.

SPEAKER_05 2:33

Okay. No, I didn't, it's not space.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

But um, but no, I did like it, and it kind of goes with it. And I thought that in an attempt to bring a certain degree of levity in today's episode, I thought I would wear a lighter colored tie versus going dark on dark on dark. I thought I'd try to show the lighter, more jovial me.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

I love it. Absolutely. And what hopefully people can get to know the lighter, more jovial you as they flip through the pages of stair pits, or more get to know the real you. True. Right? Behind the pages, the man within the lines as you read stairpits, right? Out now on the website, all over the place. Right. We're back again, R.A. Thompson, for more topics trying to break down this book, your life, a little bit of my life as well. Okay. One of the topics we wanted to discuss today was adoption. Okay. From two adoption in the same sense, but from two very different angles. Yes, sir. Right? I'm adopted, and so are you, yeah, technically. And so let's break it down a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about it. What to you, um, what was the best and worst part of adoption? I know I have my answers queued up and ready because I've talked about it for only the last 28 years of my life. Okay. So you're a rookie at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm still I'm still trying to trying to learn, trying to feel it out.

SPEAKER_04 3:59

When you get up to about 60, 65, you can go right from the break into the course. There's no extra. Get it really pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

I'm excited for that transition. Let me tell you what. I'm excited to be able to grow in that space in my life. Um, and also I I know it's in chapter five or six, so I want to backtrack just a little bit. In chapter five or six, you mentioned that you feel like or you felt like your parents' divorce or pending divorce kind of saved your life in a way. Break that down for me a little bit and why you thought that was the case.

SPEAKER_04 4:35

Um, so my biological parents were extremely ill-suited to be parents. They were much more interested in themselves, how good they looked with each other. Um, neither of my parents, my grandparents wanted my parents to get married because they could foreshadow that when you have children that are incapable of compromising and only self-centered, that the chance of that union presenting a child with those inherent statistics or those inherent characteristics was never going to make it. I mean, it was just not going to work. And they were right. My parents were totally ill-suited to be there. But also when I look at it, that with both of them being drunk and both of them having way too much of a relationship with chemical abuse, that I would have probably followed in my father's footsteps and I would have been dead by the time I was 14, because I would have become a very accomplished drinker. My father used to like to drive and drive fast. I would have been driving way too soon and driving way too drunk and resulting in being way too dead and killing myself or others. And I think that my father's disregard for virtually everybody when he was drinking would have um led me down a path that's far too easy for me to uh to follow. So I think in that regard, having them divorced and getting rid of one of the influences truly saved my life. I mean, looking back on it, it was one of the greatest things in the world. Um at the time, well, the book never would have been written because I probably would have been dead and it would have been an entirely different set of characters. What I got instead was um my mother trying to look for other people to party with, eventually deciding that she wanted to get married and then showing up with a guy that's you know, this guy's gonna be your father. And it was like, wow, I need this, like I need a second appendix.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

You're just waiting for both appendix to run to rupture, needing double surgery, doubling your chance of death, right? I mean, that that's a great analogy. I like that.

SPEAKER_04 6:55

Yeah, that's it, yeah. Or the way I look at it is allowing the uh surgeon to have two swimming pools.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

There you go.

SPEAKER_04 7:00

Yeah, that's why I kind of look at it.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

I like that. That's the answer. Yes, yeah, yeah. I I went into the wrong occupation apparently when it comes to uh to my work life. Um adoption, okay, transitioning from that life, which it is interesting, not a lot of people can say that, hey, the divorce of my parents saved my life. So that that's a very another very unique lens. You're able to look at life, parenting, family through that whole deal as well. So tell us a little bit about your adoption story and kind of what you took from it from the good, the bad, the ugly.

SPEAKER_04 7:33

Yeah, it's kind of interesting. It's actually the theory of the third book. And but the the general idea of it is that all of a sudden there's this um proud but meaningful moment where all of a sudden I'm now going to be this guy's, you know, legal son, and my mother is going to be, you know, the you know, the mother of his kid. So all of a sudden, it's the three of them are a union, and I have a legal umbilical cord that somewhat connects me. And the whole time it was um it was like being an observer in my own life. I mean, it was like everything that I saw in the real world was so totally different than I saw in our life. And it was like we lived on this asteroid that had its own gravitational rules that uh served no one other than the person who was the biggest victim at that time. You know, it's like whoever was the drunkest got their way. And there was no there was nothing to do other than just kind of watch these crazy things happen. I mean, we'll use the appendix example, watching Appendix A fight Appendix B to see who is going to be the most appendix-y. And yet no one knows what the appendix does. So it was perfect.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Impressive.

SPEAKER_04 9:04

What was it like, female? Because you have your adoption story is yeah, significantly different than mine. So give me, give people a little bit of a shot on yours.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Yeah, so originally born in Houston, Texas, was adopted when I was basically a newborn. Um my uh my birth mom um had two sons already, and decided that it was, and she to this day has kept them. They all live down in Houston. I've stalked them all over social media and have found them. We've yet to have contact, though. Um, but uh decided it was best for my life to give me up and take me out of whatever situation she was in, which I can take a pretty good guess that it was a far worse situation than what I grew up in. And so I am very, very grateful to my birth mom for choosing to I don't know if it was a sacrifice for her or not. I want to assume that it was that she gave me up, and I'm super grateful to my adopted parents as well to not only adopt me, but to to welcome me in as one of their own to the point where they gave me the family name, right? I'm Max Christensen III in my family, and so they not only um had enough pride to make me their own child, but to give past me the family name and and and make me an an heir to the Christensen throne, if you will. And so that that was an an amazing uh experience, but also a very hard one from the standpoint of I'm a very logical person, and I always I need I always need a reason for why things happen. The answer is not just because. All right. So I wrestled from the time I was five or six years old to the time I was 18, um, or 20, really, with the concept of why did my mom give me up? There had to be there had to be a specific reason, and or there had to be something that I had done, even though I was I was a baby, I didn't I had no idea. Well, you are annoying. Which, yes, and I'm and I'm sure that started right as right as I came out of the wood. Yes, 100%. Make sense to me. But go absolutely, yes.

SPEAKER_05 11:17

There's the simple answer.

SPEAKER_02 11:18

I think I was a pretty ugly kid as well, and so so that that doesn't help either. You saved a lot of money in therapy. Go on. Yes, 100%. And so and so I I wrestled with the the concept of my mom kept my two older brothers but gave me up. Why would she give me up? Why would she keep them? All those sorts of things, while also living an amazing life that my adopted parents gave me.

SPEAKER_04 11:43

And your adoptive parents are white.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Yes, yes, which was a struggle in and of itself, simply from the standpoint of they weren't able to empathize with everything I went through on a on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. Right. It was my parents are the best people I've ever met on the planet. I'm I'm only I'm the second oldest of six black kids that they chose to adopt. None of us are biologically biologically related. All of us are from six different families from different parts of the United States, and they brought us all into their home and made us a family. And they are amazing, but it was difficult to not have parents to, you know, if things happened racially, they were very protective of us and want always wanted to help, but there's not always a solution. There were and they and they couldn't feel the pain exactly the way that we felt it. So that was a dead that was difficult as well, just to wrestle with being a black guy with white parents to begin with, but being a black guy with white parents living in Utah even ups the ante there a little bit as well. And so so the so the struggles were were always there and have been my whole life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:55

It's interesting that you say that. Do you know who Thomas Aquinas was?

SPEAKER_02 12:59

I've heard the name, but don't know the story.

SPEAKER_04 13:01

Yeah. He was in the 13th century. He was a Catholic theologian, philosopher, priest, amazing guy. He had many very meaningful quotes. One of my personal favorites was everything in life is simple. It's just not easy.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

I like that. It's also true.

SPEAKER_04 13:21

Yes. And it's interesting when when I think one of the commonalities I think that has allowed us to become friends and get to know each other was you were black raised by white people. Um in an early part of my life being white, I was raised by a black couple for all intents of purposes. And in that time in San Francisco, the Fillmore was the black ghetto. And the babysitter, the second babysitter that I had, well, the the more important babysitter that I had was um a woman named Rose. And she had a boyfriend named Clyde, and Clyde was a jazz drummer. And I spent a tremendous amount of time with him, and it would be weird going there. We were in this four-story walk-up in the Fillmore, um, and it was too dangerous for me to go on the streets, so they would just let me play on the fire escape. So I was in like kindergarten ish, and it was okay for the kid to play on the fire escape four stories up, was dangerous for him to go onto the street. And when I would go onto the street, it's you know, you were beaten up because you were white. And I had no idea. I mean, it just occurred to me, well, cool, I'm hanging out with the black dudes. That's fine, that's I guess what I do. And I couldn't figure out like why I was, you know, wrong. And it was kind of a real weird feeling, but it was cool hanging out on the fire escape at a certain level. So I would just sit on the fire escape with like a shirt or sweater pulled up over my knees and just read on the fire escape while Rose would um watch daytime TV and look, she's trying to become a beautician. She'd read fashion magazines and deal with that. And then sometimes when Clyde would come over, like Clyde would teach me jazz.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Wow. I now see why you you chose me to be your your your black uh friend here in this life, right? I now see why you you were more comfortable around me from the jump. I was always like, why is this old white guy so comfortable around this big black guy with tattoos? Well, because you lived in the ghetto for a minute or two out there in California.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

No, I spent a little bit of time in there, but it's you know, and it's I'm sure just pretty much like the you know white ghetto that you were involved in in northern Utah.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

Yes, absolutely. I grew up in in the really hard part of the white ghetto on the west side of Smithfield. Yeah, well, okay. I grew up on the west side of the railroad tracks. Yeah, but Okay. I mean, you know, my parents would live on five acres of land, so I was more of a farm kid than anything else. But uh, but yeah, very interesting uh uh growing up in that dynamic, like I said.

SPEAKER_04 16:03

Was there ever like a Donnie and Marie song about the white ghettos of of your neighborhood? Or is that something I just avoided?

SPEAKER_02 16:10

Yeah, I think I yeah, I not that I recall, at least not that I was shown.

SPEAKER_04 16:13

Not on your show, but it was like on maybe outtake albums. Absolutely like that.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

100%.

SPEAKER_04 16:18

Yeah. But but I think it's there, so like in my sense of adoption, it was more like uh my mother's maybe attempt at trying to get more union with her and her f her husband when she's gonna become a mother with an additional kid. But it was more performative is too generous of a word. I mean, it was a a symbolic act with no meaning behind it. And your parents, the thing that always amazes me about your parents is the uh the sense of service, that sense of wanting to have children. And I don't know, s to me, man, that's something that's extremely interesting. What I mean, walk me through your I think the thing that's interesting is we all we all justify things that happen in our life. We have imperfect information and then we try to weave things together into becoming something meaningful. So when you said, you know, you're a r you're a very logical person and you're very systematic in the way that you look at it. Do I come across as systematic in the way that I do things or look at things?

SPEAKER_02 17:42

In a sense, of course. I mean, I mean, I I I think you you have a a theme or a routine in which you break down, you know, different questions or provide answers, and you do it in a very intellectual way, right? I mean, I think a lot of what you do in life, you know, which is there's a reason for this book, is a reason why we are sitting here, is because you are a natural mentor. No matter how old or young someone is, you try to, you try to have that person walk away from the conversation that you are having with them with even the tiniest piece of new information, of learned information that you have taught and provided to them. And so I feel like you you are very um uh methodical or systematic in taking what someone is asking or even just normal conversation and providing at least one teaching point to whatever person that you're talking to, and you a fantastic job of that.

SPEAKER_04 18:38

Well, thank you very much. I I do try to deal with that, but I think when I look at my life, I think I have a real I try to come up with the understanding or the underlying theme or what's going on. And then I think in the best tradition of jazz musician, and I don't play any instruments by the way. I mean I can kind of do air guitar, air bass, air triangle. I mean, I do a number of great things. Absolutely air cymbals. I'm really good at that one. But um, air canon. It's it's kind of a they're all great instruments. Um I think that for me it's I like to take things apart. And to me, the big example of it kind of comes down to a mathematical equation. If one plus two is three, then three minus two should be one, and three minus one should be two. And I like to see how how the equation works. And if it works this way, does it also work in reverse? And if that's the case, then it's true. And then if it isn't, then there's either a confounding factor or confounding principle, or the entire equation is void, or it's just a symptom, but not an actual cause. And I think that that's I mean, you've known me for a while on how many different, you know, we'll discuss something and whatever the current statistic is or something, I immediately just throw it all out and start over. And I think that maybe that's the difference to it. In my life, um my adoption meant absolutely nothing to me. And it was, if anything, just kind of a source of embarrassment. And I did everything that I could to distance my I mean, they were distancing me, but I was more than willing to draw the line and build the wall on the back side of that. I mean, there was any any sense of involvement was just non-existent. What was it like all of a sudden you show up with five other black people, two white people, Lord knows how many grandparents showing up? And I mean, is there is there bonding with your other siblings at that place? I mean, is there a wall? Is there a wall with them? Or walk the walk me through what your uh assimilation integration within the family was, within the community was. It had to be in a lot of ways like just learning a learning a new language from day one.

SPEAKER_02 21:24

Absolutely. Yeah. We grew up like just about any other family, simply because my parents got all of us when we were very, very young. We were all pretty much, I mean, born, adopted, integrated into the family. There were none of us, none of us came in with any recollection of our other families. We were all so young. And so from that standpoint, this is all that we know is our parents here, us siblings over here, and we we love each other just like any other siblings. Siblings. We fight just like any other siblings. I have two younger brothers who, I mean, you know, luckily I'm the biggest person in my family, including bigger than both of my parents. I had the opportunity to establish a hierarchy early when it came to the siblings. Okay. Never really had to touch my sisters, beat the piss out of my little brothers until they finally learned, okay, even if we try to two-on-one this guy, we're both still too small in order to take him, both of us two-on-one. And so they as we got older, they fell in line, knew, knew where to where where to stand and how to act and when to salute the general when he walks into the room. Okay. Um, and so, but it yeah, so just like any other family, and but also played the role of big brother, right? I was always the listen, if any of you get on my nerves, you know, like you're gonna you're gonna get some or hear some from me, but also nobody else can touch you guys outside of this house. So I was very defensive of my siblings and of my parents as well. Um, I I I truly, you know, love my family because I believe how blessed I am to simply be a part of it. Um very, very, very defensive of my parents. If anything happens to them, if anybody, you know, you know, comes after them or says any mean thing to them, just point me to their address and I'll go burn their house down. I mean that that that's the kind of of energy I bring when it comes to to defending my parents because those people saved my life. You know, it exact opposite when it comes to, you know, your adoption created probably more distance between you and your parents, where my adoption was my life. That I had to, in order to what I felt, function, live, and grow, and do what I needed to do, be super close to my parents. Um and and they they took it in a in a different way than I've seen other adopted parents take it because you know uh all the majority of the black people I know in Utah, most of us were adopted by white families. And I've had some friends have different experiences where they have made the attempt to find their their birth family in order to fill kind of that gap, that hole, to get some questions answered. And their parents, their adopted parents, go above and beyond and make sure that never happens simply out of the fear that if they do find, if we find our biological parents, we will no longer call them mom and dad. Right? And my parents were the exact opposite, where they told every single one of me and my siblings that if you guys ever want to find your biological families, we will do everything we can to help you. And when you find them, we will be second in line behind you to give them a hug and tell them thank you. Um, because all of our adoptions are closed, so none of us had a lot of that information. We've all had to kind of find and search. And some of my siblings have never wanted to know. They're super content with their life. Like, I don't really care. I was one of the more curious ones, the most curious. I probably took adoption of the heart out of all my siblings and wanting to know and learn about my past. But I've I've said from from a very young age that that Max and Christy Christensen will always be mom and dad for me. I will never find my biological parents and call them anything else outside of their government names. They will never be called mom and dad in my eyes, because mom and dad are the people who raised me.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

Right.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

Not the people who created me. And so, and so for me, yes, it it will absolutely um uh stay that way. And they and they've been very gung ho and and and excited about the possibility of of any of us finding any of our of our biological families. Um but it was interesting from the standpoint of growing up, and I want to ask you this question. You know, all of us, in my family at least, a lot of adopted kids that I know have hit a point in life, younger in our years, of course, where our parents tell us something that we don't necessarily agree with, and we hit them with, you're not my mom or dad, you don't get to tell me what to do. Did that ever come across with you, with your your you know, adopted father and things like that, where he would tell you something and you'd be like, You're not my dad. You can't you can't order me around. Did that ever happen in your life?

SPEAKER_04 26:35

Oh, well, there was there's many examples in the book that are pretty funny on being able to look at it, where the level of control that he had over me was perhaps at best illusionary. I mean, I recognized, you know, he could beat the crap out of me and he would hit me often on it. But at the same point, I recognized all I had to do was feign being hurt enough where, you know, you took a certain amount of a beating so that he would feel that he got something out of it. But then you just become to a performative close at the end. And it was so clear to me that everything that he thought and did was wrong, it was very, very easy to determine, okay, that won't work. So there has to be another answer. So all I ever thought about was what is the other answer? What could possibly be another justification for it? And so I spent a lot of time um just recognizing that they were wrong. You know, it's kind of funny where you would say that you went out of your way to defend your parents, which is, you know, admirable. It's the the role a son should play. When people would make any comment that my parents were stupid, it was kind of like the um kind of like there's an old joke where somebody is um interviewing uh Mary, uh Mary Lincoln, and the joke goes, Well, other than that, how is the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

SPEAKER_05 28:23

Right. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_04 28:25

Well, it's kind of, you know, but it's um but I kind of think about like my whole life when somebody would say, Well, my parents were, you know, were were stupid or they were lame or that they were retarded, whatever word you were going to use. And my thought was that's all you got out of it, huh? I mean, really, you you don't see you don't see the total depth of what it is. You you've seen one element of it. And I just kind of laughed at it. And to me, once I got once I had an affirmation that they were wrong, it was just an example of Well, like a lot of times one of the things that I look at is if somebody, you know, if somebody was trying to do something, you know, they say that they were, you know, somebody says they're trying to help you, but then you look at everything they s they've done for you, and then you might ask the question, if they're not helping you, you might ask the question, if you were trying to screw me over, what would you have done differently? And sometimes the label that people put on their actions have absolutely no relevance to the actual accents. And when you were talking, it was one of the things I thought was kind of interesting on it was I would say a categorical way of looking at it was parent in your family was a verb. Parent in my family was a noun.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Wow. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 29:58

It was just simply a type. Absolutely. And it meant nothing. Whereas yours actually tried to do something. I mean, they gave you a sense of God, they gave you religion, they gave you a sense of family, they gave you an opportunity to have commonality within a universe that would not be particularly initial visually obvious, you know, different on it. And so I do wonder about that, you know, that is is adoption then the willingness to take parenting from a noun into it correct adoption would be taking the noun and turning it into a verb, versus in my case, I think it was they wanted the title. You know, they didn't want to, if they were going to try to raise my stepbrothers as quote, a family, they wanted to, well, and this one. You know, there's there's you know, a strangeness that there's ten years between one and two. But if they have the same last name, there might be always in the war or you know, something happened.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:06

But it was clearly, you know, um, you know, I I'm my stepfather, well, I'm your father, you know. And it's like, well, and you know, it's like in a quarter gets you, you know, how many nickels again? For those of you playing at home, it's five. But um, but yeah, it was like he would say things, and all I would do is just kind of, well, that's extremely interesting. And why did you say that? I mean, that was kind of the biggest thing that I ever had with him. It's like, why did you say that? Why are you wasting oxygen that way? And it was, I don't know, it was kind of a bizarre hit.

SPEAKER_02 31:47

So let me ask you a cynical question here.

SPEAKER_04 31:50

I mean, I just give you one piece of the backside of that. It's an interesting thought on it. You know, when I look at the concept of adoption, you've been very kind of offering me the chance to be a mentor on it. And I, you know, I wonder without paying for a lot of therapy, I wonder how much of my willingness to um to mentor or to try to be of service to other people is an act of maturity, whether it's an act of FUism, where I'm trying to show my stepfather that everything that he couldn't do, I could. And how much of it is an act of healing my own inner child, where you know, you have you have a hole and that child was treated well whole in your heart, how do you how do you fill that hole? You know, and I and I wonder how much of that just comes down to, you know, uh trying to mentor other people or trying to help other people maybe uh find a step, if you know if all things are simple but not easy, maybe giving people one idea of how to do something in a more efficient or better way.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

That's a very interesting concept, especially because that's all that's all a lot of my my growing up was was I'm going to do things to my whole entire drive was to prove to my birth mom that I was worth something. Okay. Um when I was I remember I was six years old, we lived on 40 acres in Idaho, up in Holmedale, little tiny town on the Oregon border. Okay. Um, and I'm I would walk the property in my little cowboy booth and just cry all the time because I couldn't understand, I could not come up with a reason as to why my birth mom gave me up. Okay, I'm very, very good in life. It anytime any bad thing happens to me, I can justify it by by creating a scenario. I'm like, okay, this bad thing didn't happen to me for no reason. It happened because let me go through all the bad things I've done. This bad thing is what led to this that that I did has led to this bad thing returning and happening to me. Okay. I've never created a scenario where oh, that just bad things happen to good people. No, bad things happen to Max Christensen the third because Max Christensen the third is a cynical bad person. Okay, I I I create a lot of scenarios like that in my head. And when I was six years old, I couldn't do that. When I couldn't find or remember an exact reason why my mom gave me up again, I was five days old. Right, right.

SPEAKER_04 34:45

So you weren't paying attention.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:47

So all you did was crying and you don't pay attention. Yes. Max, the story's kind of coming out.

SPEAKER_02 34:51

Yeah, see, see, I mean, you're starting. See, this is why we sit down. See, this is free therapy for me. We're starting to piece the things together here.

SPEAKER_04 34:58

Um so all you five-year-olds at home, there's this is what will happen to you if you don't wise up. Just what do you know?

SPEAKER_02 35:04

You're gonna turn into this guy, which is awful. Terrible.

SPEAKER_04 35:06

Um 300-pound black dude, whether you want it or not.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Yes, absolutely. And so um, I remember being six years old, and I don't think I laugh about it now, but uh, I remember I made the decision that I was gonna be famous at something. Okay, didn't know yet at that time I wanted to be a cowboy, and up ended up realizing, oh, I remember the first time I watched sports, and I'm like, wait, there's people like me who look like me that are doing this. Maybe I should try that. Okay. And so it ended up it ended up being sports. I remember being six years old, and I'm like, okay, I am going to be famous at something. Why? And I created this scenario in my head because what would happen is I would be really famous with lots of money, and I'd be on TV, okay? And my and my birth mom would be sitting around watching TV, and she wouldn't know it was me. But somehow, some way, God would give her this, would would let her know that that is the kid who you gave up. That's what you missed out on. And in that way, that would create a scenario where my birth mom for an instance or for a time would get the chance to feel the pain I felt my whole life. So I started chasing what I could do to become famous and ended up falling into sports. Started playing football and basketball when I was nine years old, was lucky enough to be on a lot of good teams, went a lot of team and individual accolades as well. And then as I get into high school, start getting recruited to go play big-time college football, right? Getting recruited by Oregon and Stanford and Notre Dame and Missouri and all these other schools. And um, but every every time I never enjoyed life growing up per se, especially in something that's fun like sports. Every time I got handed a trophy, every time I got handed an award, especially an individual accolade, I had a trophy wall in my room, and I would just take it, put it up there, I wouldn't smile, I wouldn't celebrate, take it, put it up there, never look at it again because the job wasn't done.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

Right.

SPEAKER_02 37:18

It was just okay, that's another stepping stone to getting to where I'm at. But I don't get the chance to have joy, I don't get the chance to celebrate until I do something worthy enough. Because I didn't view my own self as worthy. It was I needed something tangible, right? Um, until I can prove that I'm worthy enough, that I am good enough, that I have I have, you know, passed up my my birth mom's expectations of me. Because in my head, I was like, okay, she gave me up because she thought I'd be nothing. Right? That's kind of the conclusion I came to. Let me prove her wrong. And so that was my entire life. I remember my junior year of high school. Um, I had five and a half sacks in one game against against our arch rival. We won big, all this stuff. And I was more mad after the game than any of the guys we just beat. And this tells you how kind of how cynical I was, and maybe still am. Um because I remember being interviewed and I was after the game and I was really pissed off and and I and I was really mad, and people kept asking me why I was mad, and it was because uh the state record for Utah for sacks in a game is seven. Okay, the individual record. I had five and a half in that game, but I missed two clean sacks I could have had. In my head, I was still a failure because five and a half sacks, that's pretty good for one game. But I had the chance to hold the individual record all by myself at the top of the mountain and wasn't able to accomplish that. Which then still made me not good enough, which then still made justified cades. Yes, and it spirals out of control to the point where I, you know, still wasn't there, right? Um and so I was like, I have to go to college, you know, I have to play college football, I need to go to the NFL in order to justify my existence, do something that can make me famous, that can make me well known, because if not, then my birth mom was right all along. So it wasn't until I was 20, 21 years old that I finally came to the realization of I don't really need to chase fame and fortune in order to prove that I was good enough. Again, I was 21. Yeah. The first time ever I ever even thought about came to coming to this conclusion of maybe I don't need this to prove to myself, to my birth mom, to the world that I am good enough for for love, for care, for respect. But like you mentioned, you know, you you kind of question yourself on am I doing this purely because I'm a good honest person, or to prove to people from my past, or to make up for lost time thing. I can be honest. I that was ex that was absolutely what led me down the and the the sports path, and for and somewhat made me successful in it because I played with so much rage and anger all the time because I had I had to prove something. Um, and so that was my total complete drive. Like you mentioned, was the only reason I did it was to try and chase something that could make me known to a large group of people and make me famous in order to then prove that I was good enough for something.

SPEAKER_04 40:38

Yeah. One of the that that's I totally understand what you're saying there. To me, I think one of the justifications that I tried to play with it is it's kind of the convergence of a couple of things. Number one is two things can be true at the same time. You know, and that I think a lot of times showing them that I could do it, and and in my situation, it was a weird thing that I would do things that nobody else other than me and God saw what I did. I mean, the whole goal was how could I do whatever I'm doing and get zero recognition for it? Because I'm probably what I'm doing is wrong, and I don't want to be not, I don't want to not be able to do it. So I have to be able to do it in a way that allows me to get maximum understandment and accomplishment from doing it, but I can't tell anybody. So it's like, wow, look at all the cool things I can do, but yet there's nobody knows what I do. And at that point, it allowed me to become more and more and more invisible. I mean, that was my whole goal, was how invisible I could be. But it definitely started out of a um I got initial recognition for being smart. And then I just wanted to play that forever. Uh but anytime I would try to show people that I might be able to do something, I was immediately criticized for it. And then all that did is it just made me want to learn more. And I felt that there would be some magical point that I would be accepted for it. Um But the the thing that kept me going was it was enjoyable to do it. I mean, it killed a lot of time and it gave me a greater sense of understanding. And I think for me, it was the quest for understanding or the quest for sequencing that drove me more than anything else. And I think the third thing that people just don't understand, and you only see it in retrospect, um you don't recognize what God is shaping you to do in the future. And that's the thing, is that you know, we learn the lesson without ever being told the purpose for it. And I think part of that is the concept of having free will, is that we're we're shaped to do particular work and to be of service to people. And then the question is, are we clever enough to find that work and to find those people? And I don't it it doesn't it doesn't click until you're much, much older, and then you recognize, oh, well that's why that happened. Then it becomes upon just incredibly clear. But it isn't until you get really you can actually see the path that you were put on. It's much easier to see the path after you've been doing it for a while. But at the time, it just seems like another absolutely useless random event that upsets. the entire apple card of whatever it is that you're doing. And it's I had a um it's in the second book, but I had a guy who was a uh a former circuit court judge who was in the Marines. And um he taught me how to do electrical wiring, which is like a bizarre thing. But I learned how things would go together and deal with that. And ultimately it allowed me to um at one point I decided that I was living in the basement at that time. It was a dirt basement with a concrete slab. And it allowed me to rewire our own house where I developed my own electrical outlet that I could run a television off of that I stole. So I was able to splice into the neighbor's cable, run the cable under our foundation into this hole in the basement and deal with it. And that gave me the opportunity to watch television and for the first time in my life recognize how things might actually work like to watch sitcoms and to see like how is a joke told, how is something funny told? And it was like, oh my God, well that's how people actually interact because up until that point I had people that I thought were generally stupid and were trying to get me to do things that I didn't want to do. I had a couple people that were very very nice and loving and caring to me and I had people that ignored me. And that idea of how to talk or how to interact with people was just a mystery and by watching television I learned how a conversation might go. Yeah. And then it was all of a sudden well wow that's kind of cool. And at the time I never would have um if I didn't learn that I would have probably become even more of a recluse because I never would have been around people. And if it wasn't for a previous babysitter I had that pretty much taught me how to steal, I never would have occurred to me how I could effectively have stolen a television.

SPEAKER_01 46:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:20

And so you don't recognize the weird sin that you're subjected to that it serves a purpose. So it's kind of an odd thing. But again you just don't know that and I I would offer that you know when you do have the opportunity to have children, I believe that two things will happen, much in the way that you know some of the other people that you've met that have been in my life from you know previous times that finding people that you actually can be of service to does an awful lot to filling um that hole in your heart. And it's powerful. And I think that that answer is that once you recognize that we're all being shaped to do something that accept the shaping and the faster you can accept the shaping the simpler it is. And I think that's what it is.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

Let me ask you a cynical question if I may okay I'm not I don't understand I haven't come to a conclusion or reason as to or logic I guess as to why grown people would continually beat on a kid okay um was there ever a time in your when you came of age or anything like that where you you know had the thought that you're like I want to go back and just beat my stepdad's ass you can keep that in there too um or beat him within an inch of his life right or kind of get get get recompense for all the beatings that you took in your life the physical abuse things like that because that can make such an impact on people especially from different studies and things as we've seen today.

SPEAKER_04 48:14

What was kind of your reaction to that as you got older when I was just before my mother and stepfather divorced so I would have been maybe sophomore in high school beginning sophomore in high school and at that time although I was generally kicked out of high school one of the only things I really did enjoy doing was going through the pretext that I might um be on the football team. So I just go to two a days. And it was I mean that's how boring it was that I actually wanted to go to two a days and and at that time I was relatively fast and I could do things I could you know I was could be qualified or recognized as somewhat of an athlete and it was a lot of fun. And the fact that back then there was a lot of tackling to the ground there was a lot of brutality in it and it was enjoyable. It just truly was and my stepfather was a chronic smoker and we had this cabin that was up at about 3,000 feet and then there was another place that we'd go to is about four or five thousand feet where there was a dam and you would go up there and swim. And they had a little marked off area where the boats could go along but the boats weren't supposed to go in the swimming area. So they had it marked into the shallow area then the deep area and then the rest of the reservoir. And so my mother and half brothers and I were up there. My stepfather came up at that point and he's smoking and I'm out like just splashing around in the water kind of hanging floating. Well he comes out when I was much younger he was taller I was like 6'4 he'd play off the bottom and he would dunk me and he was big and he was a strong man and I just you know I just was not in the mood to be dunked or whatever it was. And I knew that I could swim better than he could. So I went from the area where he could play off the bottom to the area that he couldn't play off the bottom and he's like chasing me. And then I went underneath the rope and I continued to just swim farther and farther and farther out. And he's smoking coming from ground zero about 8,000 feet. Wow okay and all of a sudden it I mean them the lungs ain't working the way they did at you know at two thousand at you know at sea level. For sure. And so we're out there a little bit and he's swimming but now he has to kind of break and kind of catch his breath a little bit and I'm just close enough where he can continue to maybe get me but I could just be fast enough that he'll never touch me. So we get out a little bit more and he well that's enough I think we're done with this game. And um he used to well you know it's just a game it's just a game when he used to splash me when I was a kid and I hated it. And so at that point, you know it occurred to me that well it's just a game. So I swam around the other side of him and I you know I got him in a life saving carry and I just pulled him farther out. And anytime he would do anything in a life saving carry, you know you just get put the guy's face in the water and get on the top of him and he can't do shit. Wow. So I pulled him out maybe another two, three hundred yards out into the middle of this and it's cold out the water's not warm. Yeah. It's cold. And I would just splash water in his face and I told him he only lived because I wanted him to live and I told him that it would be a heroic thing that we tried to swim across the reservoir and I'll take your drowned body and I'll bring it back to the shore but you'll be dead and that you only live through my grace. And what just a game just a game and I continued to splash water in his face and I legitimately thought about killing him at that point. And I could have done it and I could have gotten away with it Wow but I didn't and so he was exhausted and I put him in a life saving carry and I brought him all the way back. He eventually coughed all the water out of his lungs, got into his truck went home and then my mother found out the next month that he had been having an affair with somebody because she got the credit card and saw the places he was going. Yeah. And that was it and he left at that point. But I did I sincerely thought about killing him at that point.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

Trevor Burrus And what what held you back? What what what was it just your your conscience, your your your I'm not sure I mean I would like to say it was goodness inside of me.

SPEAKER_04 52:46

At the other point I was thinking are people going to believe we're gonna try to swim you know two and a half miles across this reservoir? You know that there there had to be some reason that we got out there. Yes and it wasn't like anybody could see or could hear the conversation and then it occurred to me that well maybe my conscience would betray me you know and at that point too it was seeing that I beat him you know it was seeing that we were on equal ground I mean we were we were there and at that point I had mercy on him and that was something that he didn't have and that maybe from a higher level that God was giving me the opportunity to forgive him. And one of the ways I was able to forgive him was I recognized the only thing he really had over me was power or the illusion of power and I had power over him and I acted in a more just way than he did. But yeah, I at that moment I was well of course and then the other thing is this I mean my God man you're 15 years of age you know I mean if you know Mary Tyler Moore somebody would have walked by you know in a hot bikini and would have said you know kill the guy and we could have sex dude you know just like that. Done over cancer yeah kill the guy what's the story there's no problem that I love you. That's all I have to do? How easy is it to kill? But no it's it's a weird way of looking at it. But no I mean but it was that moment that it did occur to me at that moment that I could have killed him.

SPEAKER_01 54:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:27

And I didn't and then the weird thing was um it had a um it had an effect on him that the next time that he and I talked was um let's say it's maybe fourteen then fourteen then maybe thirty two or thirty three really yeah so I mean that was about the next time that I really did anything with him during that period of time.

SPEAKER_02 55:00

And so how did how did you get from that instance he divorced you him and your mom get divorced to then 15 plus years later I found a library book that he hadn't returned.

SPEAKER_04 55:13

I figured it was a lot of you know wasn't no it wasn't that it was circling back to seeing him again. No it wasn't that it was uh my middle brother David uh was getting married and he was invited to the wedding and um it was enjoyable because he's at that point living in a single wide and I'm like looking at him and it's like yeah you're just I mean it was that that whole theory of yeah I'm wearing a nice suit you're living in a single wide and you're wearing you know a Wrangler leisure suit.

SPEAKER_02 55:53

Trevor Burrus And at that point you were very successful.

SPEAKER_04 55:55

Oh no yeah I was successful yeah I mean I I was so far ahead of him it was ridiculous. Yes. And it was joyful. I mean there was a certain level of like huh and interesting and um you know the theory that you know you're stupid, you're you know you're stupid, you're ugly lame, you're whatever the hell it is and all of a sudden it's like well perfect. Yep. You know you don't have to say anything so like I won. That's just it just I mean silence silence is suffocation in many cases. And that's really what it came out to. So it was it was a bizarre thing of just being able to kill him. And then I think also at that point of recognizing that you can walk anger back became a real thing. And it and it occurred to me at that point that my ability to blow people up I just didn't need to do it. I mean that I had the opportunity to blow somebody up at his kid's wedding and I didn't blow the guy up it just made me think well maybe I don't have to maybe not only do I not have to maybe I shouldn't and there were still other elements where I might have blown people up in my life but as opposed to turning it into a situation where I would just rage at people for the simplest thing and it it was kind of this affirmation that I didn't have to. And I think that that's the that's the piece that you know if you look at um if you look at the story of like Cain and Abel as an example there's a zillions of interpretations of the story but if you look at it in from this lens that Adam and Eve were both created by God. Cain and Abel were the first two people in recorded history that were vaginally born so they were humans. And if you look like in the idea of being adopted we'll tie this all together Max watch this is going to be really good. This is what for those of you playing at home this is what's called high-end performance art. Okay. So Adam and Eve's life their life story consists of in Adam's world one day showing up in paradise hanging out and being with God the next moment giving somebody that he can then create with and hanging out with God then being kicked out of the garden right and you have a couple of kids. So the first couple of kids that you have are the first people and their emotional base is based is patterned after people that are guilty from disappointing God are living in a sense of the shadow of the immediate shadow of the original sin and are trying to live their lives in a situation where the parents have zero understanding of what raging emotion might be in young people and the inability to deal with pride, with jealousy with anything that would be out there and all of a sudden one of them is praised and the other is giving it best neutral praise and the response is I will kill him I mean that's frightening. I mean that's that's the essence of humanity is that you don't understand something that you don't get something your way so your first step is I will just kill the person that has something. It won't make me better but I will rip the other person down. And I think that if you're going to look at adoption in the best lights I would say you know write to Max's parents and they give you a prescription on how to deal with it because they went to lift as many people up as they could and to give them the greatest opportunity. If you want to see how to be you know an incredibly stupid parent you can read my book because it's really good. It has virtually chapter and verse of how to be mildly retarded and it's not in the traditional oh my parents were bad you know it's more like my parents were incapable of doing what was right. And I don't think it's so much that they were well we'll close with Thomas Aquinas again. You might remember as we talked earlier yes I do I do remember that story. That's another good one here's another good Thomas Aquinas line we were all born with two blindnesses the first blindness is sin and the second is ignorance and that if we can overcome at least one of them in part we have a chance for success and I think that that's that's ultimately what all life is about can we overcome our own ignorance which at times is quite hard. Oh it's a huge mountain well again let's say other things it's simple but it's not easy way to bring it all back around. See I learned that from you I mean that's the whole thing isn't it I've you know I've watched enough television in my life I've you know dude I can tag it back in there people don't see how that boat's gonna get right back to the harbor but yep it turns the corner there you are.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:39

Yep yes here on stair pits time is simply a flat circle that's really what it is okay that's really what it is absolutely yeah well R.A. Thompson thank you so much again for the opportunity to be a guest here on your podcast Stair Pits book out now okay talking about adoption talking about parenting talking about families uh this was a very enlightening conversation for me and I really appreciate your time sir first of all I would say that you know you can quit calling yourself a guest you're dangerously close to being you know as important as the plant behind you which is a really good plant but no we're gonna see who lasts longer me or the plant I'm just saying the plants watered yeah that's all I got to say plants watered and loved for and cared for so those you just have to get your lazy ass in here that's 100% but no um but no I'd say no thank you very much you mean you're much more of like just a person that's here I would say that you are a co host it's my pleasure and honor to work with you. Well thank you sir I appreciate that as well so again Max thank you very much for the absolutely thank you